This month we read The Last Quarter of the Moon by Chi Zijian (Harvill Secker, hardback, £12.99). Have you read it? If so, please add your comments below...

The Blurb

“At the end of the 20th century an old woman sits among the birch trees and thinks back over her life. She is a member of the Evenki tribe, who wander the remote forests of north-eastern China with their herds of reindeer, living in close sympathy with nature at its most beautiful and cruel.

An idyllic childhood playing by the river ends with her father’s death and the growing realisation that her mother’s and uncle’s relationship is not as simple as she thought. Then in the 1930s the intimate, secluded world of the tribe is shattered when the Japanese army invades China.”

The Opening

“The day Mother gave birth to me, Father killed a black bear. He located a hollow tree trunk where a bear was hunkered down in his winter storehouse, and he provoked him with a birch pole. Anger spurs bile production, swelling the gall bladder, so father waited until the hibernating bear was enraged before he raised his hunting rifle and shot him dead.

That was Father’s lucky day. He reaped a double harvest: a bear’s plump gall bladder and me.”

Our Verdict

Perhaps we ladies were not the target audience for this lengthy memoir about a mountain-dwelling tribe - not something any of us would be drawn to in a bookshop.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have its merits. From an anthropological point of view, the book is a delight: we learn all about how these reindeer folk lived – their traditions and rituals, what they feared, wore, ate (we even learn the nitty-gritty of reindeer neutering, which isn’t for the faint-hearted – let’s just say it involves a large rock and a strong arm).

The problem was the lack of depth in terms of characterisation. And my goodness, there are a lot of characters. So many, in fact, that there’s a large family tree at the start of the book, which we found ourselves turning to again and again: over three generations, Evenki folk are born and die with alarming frequency.

Would our narrator not have done better to have minimised the time span, and perhaps gone into more depth? The trouble with so many characters is that you don’t have time to connect with them emotionally, so when someone commits suicide, falls out of a tree or is swept away by an angry river, it’s difficult not to just shrug and read on. Only the narrator’s bitchy aunt, Yveline, seemed to leap off the page, but with a cast of 50-odd, we’d hoped for more.

Although it’s written simply, The Last Quarter of the Moon is a book for someone looking for academic stimulation rather than leisurely escapism. And that’s none of us.

Emma Higginbotham: Interesting stuff, but this memoir lacks what I love: believable characters, emotional connectivity and a great story. 6/10

Julie Rivers: It has all the potential ingredients for a first class historical novel, but somehow doesn’t quite come together. 6/10

Louise Cummings: While I enjoyed the historical aspects, I resented having to navigate the book with a family tree. 5/10

Lisa Millard: An evocative account of a fascinating culture, time and place, but has the feel of a self-published novel. 6/10

Alice Ryan: A few episodes had a certain charm, but overall it left me feeling thoroughly irritated. 5/10

If you’d like to read along with us, next month’s book will be Dead of Winter by Lee Weeks (Simon & Schuster, £6.99).